Under Secretary of Management Patrick Kennedy testifies before the House Benghazi Committee on October 12, 2012. (Credit: Getty Images)

Two weeks earlier, the department claimed it could take 75 years to process the FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request by the RNC [Republican National Committee]. The RNC is asking for more emails from Under Secretary of Management Patrick Kennedy, Clinton’s former chief of staff Cheryl Mills, and Clinton’s former computer technician Bryan Pagliano. They have dropped a request for emails from former Clinton aide Jake Sullivan, due to the department’s claim of being overwhelmed.

The RNC criticizes the department’s “tortoise-like” response, and claims it is using “stall tactics” and misleading legal tricks in order to delay the release until after the November 2016 presidential election. It lambasts the department’s claim that it can process only 500 pages of emails a month, noting that would set a historical record for the slowest department response time to FOIA requests.

It is probable that the emails would contain previously unknown emails to and from Clinton, since recently released emails from former Clinton aide Huma Abedin have done so. (The Hill, 6/21/2016)

The companies are Fidelis Cybersecurity and Mandiant. They base their analysis on five malware samples used in the hacking attack. Fidelis executive Michael Buratowski says, “Based on our comparative analysis, we agree with CrowdStrike and believe that the Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear…groups were involved in successful intrusions at the DNC [Democratic National Committee] . […] The malware samples matched the description, form and function that was described in the CrowdStrike blog post. In addition, they were similar and at times identical to malware that other [research firms] have associated to these actor sets.”

However, the Washington Post reports, “It is also possible, researchers said, that someone else besides the Russians were inside the DNC’s network and had access to the same documents.” (The Washington Post, 6/20/2016)

A law firm reviewing the DNC attack, Baker & McKenzie, has begun working with three cybersecurity companies to review CrowdStrike’s findings. Fidelis Cybersecurity is one of them, along with FireEye and Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (Bloomberg News, 6/21/2016) (Fidelis Cybersecurity, 6/20/2016)